


wise men say

by forsanethaec



Series: call to me with words i never knew [2]
Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Breakfast, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 20:08:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsanethaec/pseuds/forsanethaec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which mark and eduardo take a logical next step. (set 5 years after the end of "call to me.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	wise men say

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myownremedy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myownremedy/gifts).



> julia's idea; in honor of hk's [weddings comment ficathon](http://hapakitsune.livejournal.com/270378.html).

It doesn’t come up for years and years, an interval during which Mark and Eduardo attain a quiet, lovely symbiosis, until Chris gets married in 2012 and they throw him a party back in Palo Alto. 

“For everyone who got left behind,” Dustin says extremely solemnly, and Mark just backs away slowly from the planning process while Eduardo snorts with laughter. 

So they’re in the backyard, flutes of champagne and lots of Facebook and California and New York people standing around in summer clothes, and Dustin’s giving a toast and Chris and Sean are standing together next to him looking just – _wonderfully_ happy, is the best word Mark can think of to describe it. Chris is laughing quietly, eyes downcast and shoulders touching. 

Mark considers them, tilting his head toward Eduardo, who’s standing by his side near the back of the small crowd. “We could do that,” he says, a little shrug of a sentence, voice low under Dustin continuing speech. 

Eduardo looks over at him. “What?”

“Them, I mean – we could do that, we could…” he glances at Eduardo’s face, his round eyes, and smiles slightly. “You know.” 

“Are you seriously – is this what – what?”

Mark smiles in earnest now, looking down at the grass. “Okay, calm down,” he says, trying not to laugh. “Hang on.”

He lets Dustin finish speaking while Eduardo stares at him, and when it’s over they all applaud and lift their glasses and drink, and all Mark meant is that he looked at Chris and Sean and it was – nice, that’s all, it looked like it made them happier, having done the only thing that could make it more real than it already was, if that was even possible. 

He tells Eduardo this, in about as many words, in the shadow of the little beech tree they planted three years ago to match the one in the front yard. Eduardo looks at him like he’s got two heads, and then he gets all misty-eyed and Mark looks away, smiling to himself. 

“You wait here,” Eduardo tells him sternly, and moments later he’s dragged Dustin over by the elbow.

“I think Mark is trying to propose to me, maybe,” he says with an air of forced calm, “as in marriage, and he’s not doing it right and I need you to explain this to him.”

“Why me?” Dustin sounds alarmed, looking at Mark intently. “Mark. Marcus. Boss-man. Is this true?”

“I – I don’t know,” Mark says, glancing at Eduardo. “When he says it like that—”

“You looked at Chris and Sean and said to me, ‘we could do that,’” Eduardo says. 

Dustin snorts. 

“No you didn’t. Did you? _Mark_.”

“I don’t know! It just—” he turns to Eduardo. “It just seems nice,” he says evenly, meeting his eyes, “and I thought… that it would be nice.”

“It would be nice,” Eduardo says, and then he grins, shaking his head. “That’s not the problem.”

“The problem is that he wants you to do it all romantic on the beach at sunset with a mariachi band,” Dustin says to Mark with an admirably straight face.

“Well,” Eduardo says, “maybe not the mariachi part.”

“I should hope not,” Mark mutters, the corner of his mouth ticking up. “I’ll brainstorm,” he adds when Eduardo and Dustin are still looking at him expectantly. 

After Dustin wanders away again, Eduardo is still looking at Mark, all soft eyes and curving mouth, and Mark savors the warmth blooming in his chest and wonders, as he has countless times before, how he got so lucky. 

It’s easy to plan, in the end – once it’s quiet and dark in their bedroom, after the slow, sweet champagne-drunk sex and the pointed sort of not-talking-about-it that Eduardo is clearly doing – once Mark can think without Eduardo looking at him the way he had all evening and throwing off his train of thought, it doesn’t take much thinking to realize. It just seems right. It’s been a long time, and they’re _together_ , in a cemented way, in a way where it’s not just one life and another life and the place they intersect, but two lives that overlap entirely, in a way where that’s just reality. That’s them. Mark can look back five years and know that he felt even then that this was something exceptional. Of course, he’s a bit humbled and, by the same token, a lot proud that it’s lasted, but he isn’t surprised. Eduardo was – is – just different. He always has been. 

He gets up early the next morning and goes digging through his desk drawer til he finds the thing he’s looking for, and then he makes breakfast. Eduardo wanders in just as he’s considering loading it all onto a tray and taking it into the bedroom, because the eggs are getting cold, but thankfully he’s spared the likely mess that would create.

“More champagne?” Eduardo asks ruefully, scrubbing sleepy hands at his slightly hungover face, and then he stops. “Mark.”

“Shh,” Mark says, pursing his lips around a smile. “Mimosas.” There’s orange juice on the table already, and two plates of eggs and bacon, and Mark is really just absurdly pleased with himself already. Eduardo sits down, peering up at him with an all-too knowing look on his face, which Mark ignores. He sets down two half-full glasses of prosecco (which, he took the fact that they had a bottle stashed away in the pantry as a sign that this was the right move), and then the champagne bottle, cork half-stuck into the top.

Eduardo looks at it all as though there’s something he’s missing, which there is. Mark waits. It’s totally going to work, because Eduardo is a sucker for shit like this, and he’ll notice. 

“That’s not a champagne cork,” Eduardo says suddenly, staring at the prosecco like it’s sprouting wings. His gaze slides over to Mark. “Is that what I think it is?”

With difficulty, Mark swallows down the urge to gloat over the success of this scheme, and he tugs the cork out of the bottle. As an afterthought, deviating slightly from the systematic way in which he’d tipsily envisioned this last night, he drops to one knee, looking up at Eduardo and smiling wryly. 

Eduardo’s face lights up pink, and he covers his eyes with one hand.

“You,” he says, like it’s all he can manage. 

“It’s the cork from the wine from our ceremonial first date,” Mark says, even though he’s pretty sure Eduardo’s already figured this out – the cork is a familiar sight after five years, has made its way onto various shelves and tables and secret places all over the house and in their offices and has never gotten lost, browned and cracked now with age and constant, affectionate handling. “I was going to put a ring on it but I didn’t think you wanted me to wait.”

“Mark,” Eduardo says softly, hands dropping from his face. He gets that look sometimes, like he can’t believe Mark is real. Mark often wonders if it’s obvious that he’s always felt that way about Eduardo, too. 

“It’s not sunset on the beach with a mariachi band, obviously,” Mark says now, breath hitching slightly, “but – I, I do want to spend the rest of my life with you, Wardo, of course I do, and I thought that you might like to get married.”

It all comes out in a bit of a rush, the effort of simple honesty, and when Eduardo just keeps gazing at him with that tremulous smile on his face, he amends, “Will you? Marry me?” 

Eduardo laughs at that, a helpless, incredulous little laugh, his whole body lifting for a moment. “Yes,” he says, “of course I will, you absurd human being.”

“You did ask,” Mark says, grinning. 

“I did.” Eduardo pulls him up by one hand and stands so he can wrap his arms around Mark’s neck and bury his nose in the crook of his neck. “I’m so happy,” he whispers, like he can’t help himself. 

“It’s not going to change anything,” Mark says, because it’s important to rationalize his way out of situations that try to take off from the ground too much, become floaty and ridiculous with romanticism. It’s how he survives in this unlikely little partnership, how he keeps himself from getting so carried away with Eduardo that he forgets to do anything else. “It’ll just be – it’ll just be us.”

“I know,” Eduardo says, pulling back so he can look at Mark. The tips of their noses brush. “That’s why I’m happy.” He shrugs, and then he kisses Mark, holding him fast with a hand carded through his hair. The Brumont cork is still clutched in Mark’s fist, notched at the small of Eduardo’s back as his lips fall gently open beneath Eduardo’s, lets his tongue slip sweet and careless into Eduardo’s mouth, their bodies a fluid meeting of limbs and soft morning angles. 

Eduardo pries his fist open when they break apart and takes the cork from him, pocketing it. “Since I can’t wear it around my finger,” he says. Mark grins.

“All in good time,” he says, sitting down. “I’m going to eat my bacon now.”

Eduardo laughs. “Okay,” he says, and he sits too, reaching for the orange juice, and – it just is, still, the same as it’s been for years, only Mark feels like there’s validation here. Despite the times he has no idea what he’s done to deserve this storybook ending, he’s always known deep down that he earned it, that Eduardo chose him, chose them. If anything could possibly make it more real, less of a bizarre dream, a snippet of someone else’s life, then surely this is it. It’s growing up – it is, really, the best thing that could have come of this. 

Mark smiles to himself and watches Eduardo sip at his mimosa. He loves most of all how at home Eduardo looks here now, the same kind of at home he looked the very first time he walked through the door, when it was Mark’s house instead of theirs. It should have been a clue, probably, way back when. This was always here to stay.


End file.
